28 Jan 2015

Old and new

Britain’s Prince Charles, in a speech on Tuesday at a London memorial service, described the Holocaust as a lesson to all faiths and a means to help respond to turmoil in the Middle East.

70 years later, at Holocaust memorial events, what is it with speakers trying to universalize the victims?
Prince Charles and State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki opine below about the cataclysmic event.

Today, we also mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945 by the Soviet Army. As we face a global rise in anti-Semitism, it is more important than ever to remember these terrible death camps the Nazis created in order to wipe an entire race of people – men, women, and children – from the face of the Earth. They systematically swept up not only Jews, but millions of other innocents because of race, sexual orientation, disability, or political beliefs. On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the United States joins many others in paying tribute to the millions of victims who lost their lives under the Nazi regime. We also honor those who survived but still carry its lasting scars and burdens. We owe it to these people to never forget what can happen when hatred is allowed to flourish unchecked.

On Monday and Tuesday, a journalist is met with obfuscation when asked a question about beheading during the State Department briefings.

QUESTION: Oh, well, can I then – if we’re on Saudi for the moment, is there an answer to my question from yesterday about whether the United States regards beheading as a form of capital punishment to be a human rights abuse?

MS. PSAKI: I don’t have anything new to offer. I don’t know if you had chance to look at the Human Rights Reports from the past. You said you may.

QUESTION: I will confess that I did not. Is there a section on beheading?

MS. PSAKI: There’s a lot going on in the world.

We don’t make concessions to terrorists

Getting back to the Bergdahl comparison, I mean, doesn’t it strike you as a little bit hypocritical that – for the U.S. Government to say it’s all right for us to make concessions in order to get one of our guys back, but we discourage other governments from doing the same thing?